Button favours Vettel to win title

London: Jenson Button has tipped Sebastian Vettel to beat Red Bull teammate Mark Webber to the drivers' title should the pair dominate the final three races as they did in Japan last weekend.

Vettel cruised to his third victory of the season at Suzuka, his victory set up by a strong qualifying performance in which he beat his teammate to pole by less than a tenth of a second.

And although second place meant that Webber extended his lead in the championship to 14 points over Vettel and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, Button believes the young German's superior qualifying pace may prove decisive.

"Vettel has to beat Mark twice more to be on the same points," the defending world champion said. "Going into the last race with equal points I would say Vettel has the legs in qualifying and over three races would have the advantage over Mark. If those two cars have the advantage over everyone else, there won't be pressure on Vettel and he will do it."

Mind games

Of course, Button's comments may have been mind games designed to unsettle the Red Bull duo, neither of whom has won a world championship. Then again, it may be indicative of a defeated state of mind.

Certainly it is hard to imagine the Englishman would have been drawn on this subject of picking winners from rival teams had he felt that he still posed a realistic threat himself.

Button trails Webber by 31 points following his fourth place in Japan and, like his teammate Lewis Hamilton, he was subdued in the aftermath. "I would like to think that we don't have to hope they [Red Bull] crash or have reliability issues, and that we have a quick enough car to challenge them," Button said. "But when they have the pace they had here, they can cruise it. If we don't turn up in Korea with some good improvements to get us near the Red Bulls, it is almost impossible.

"We can't hope for Webber to fall off. We have to make the car quicker and if it's quicker than theirs then we still have a chance."

Button and Hamilton will be back in the simulator at McLaren's woking factory this week as they attempt to familiarise themselves with Korea's new circuit and continue to work on upgrades to their car. Hamilton believes McLaren can at least draw some comfort from the fact that they were faster than Ferrari in Japan.

"I qualified ahead of them, [and despite a five-place grid penalty] in the race I was catching Fernando," he said. "We are not yet optimised with the new wing, which is a lot faster. So we are quicker than them. But Fernando this weekend was not the biggest problem — it was more the Red Bulls. We have to do as much as we can. It is all or nothing in the next three races."

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, though, sounded confident when he revealed that his team had "always had something in hand" atSuzuka circuit.

Hard work

"I think it would be wrong to write off a team like McLaren," he said. "But we have worked very hard to get ourselves in this position and there is a very steely determination in the team. The dream scenario would be to pull out a big enough gap to those behind so that it was just down to [Vettel and Webber] on the track.

Whether that is possible, who knows? There is nothing that we fear in the remaining three races."